


Parade of Liars

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: Bad Ending, Eternal Punishment, F/M, Post-Canon, bleak and highly whack XD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 23:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: She doesn’t know which is worse; the fact she recognizes his voice at all, or that she’s glad it has to be Eikichi, of all people, to find her.





	Parade of Liars

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wanted to write a fanfic w/ this premise but I always felt like I couldn't do the premise justice, but it's been like, 10 months, so it's time to let go. Anyway does it ever fuck anyone else up that the EP bad ending is cosmetically near identical to the actual good ending, lol? 
> 
> EDIT: I wrote this between 10pm and 4am, so this is probably what venting is to me

For a while, she tries to write to him. It doesn’t escape Lisa, of course, how slightly off the whole thing is; bordering on ludicrous, really, starting from the fact that no one writes letters anymore, not unless you live out in the sticks. They have answering machines and text messages for that, now, all convenience with none of the romance.

She could’ve asked around for his email, or his phone number, but it’s his home address she knows first, because two weeks after Tatsuya stopped coming to school, before she knew the awful truth of his disappearance, she’d visited. She was worried, and sick of the things being said about him behind his back, in the hallways from which he was gone, so she tried to look for him, wondered blindly if maybe his dad or cop brother would know something.

The first two tries, they weren’t home, and the third, the tired man answering the door looked past her through his sunglasses and told her, with a terseness that seemed less practiced than it was compulsive, that he knew about his brother’s whereabouts as much as she did. He thanked her for her concern, and assured her he was doing all he could. Lisa bowed shallowly in apology, declined the polite offer to be brought home, and that was that.

She didn’t return.

Looking back, it should’ve struck her as strange— how much her heart ached night after sleepless night for a boy that shouldn’t have been anything more than a face occupying her thoughts, his name scribbled alongside perfect hearts in the margins of her notebooks, nothing more than a harmless, cloying teenage crush. Something that eventually would’ve come to an end, the way she logically knows these things do, no matter how she wants, sings otherwise.

And she tried so hard to believe that was true. Tried to pass off the tightness in her chest and the numb slant of her smile and the suffocating dreams as adolescent dramatics, even as the _I’m fine_ stuck to the hollow of her throat, feeling less and less like a lie out of necessity and more of desperation.

But destiny took no prisoners. Lisa realized that too late, and when she remembered, finally—standing at the base of the unburned shrine as her tears ran hotly down her cheeks—she knew she was gone.

She’d write a song to the tune of her heartache, if she were still a star. But being an idol isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and so she took a break after the first CD, while her untrustworthy creep of a producer snoozed his days away in a hospital room, perpetually unresponsive.

So Lisa writes to him, instead. Pages upon pages, her handwriting neat despite the slant, and the sealed envelopes smell faintly sweet, the paper crisp and perfect, and it makes her sad and sick but she doesn’t stop, driven by some compulsive urge to seek comfort in a place that has none to offer, in her memories that shouldn’t exist of a boy damned by a sin that wasn’t.

Her Tatsuya—his neck wrung out, strangled by the hands of a fate he never had a choice in.

And Lisa frowns, and looks at her heart splayed out on the paper, words lit up by the dim glow of her bedside lamp. Her lips begin to thin, tremble. She used to smile when she sang her songs, she remembers. She used to smile.

It’s only after she’s folded and tucked away the letter into the top of her unsent pile (she never sends them, only writes, only keeps) that remembers to wipe away her tears.

—

The fourth Sunday after the third years’ graduation, Lisa drags her bike out of the garage, bag slung over her shoulder, and pedals her way to an empty lot, armed with the lighter clattering in her skirt pocket, her breathing coming out strained and shallow when she dumps the contents of her bag onto the ground, envelopes pouring out of the pocket, heavy with secrets. Feet planted firmly on the ground, she inhales the deadened air, her blood soaking up the smoke as she watches the fire eat away a lifetime of emotions. The blaze a monster devouring the proof of her feelings, cremating the corpse of her love, and by the time regret starts edging into her thoughts it is already too late, the bonfire has grown too immense and there is only ash left to salvage, and that is exactly what she wants.

She is always so powerless.

She buries the dying fire under dirt and rock and water, stomps on its doused remains until the last flickers are gone at last, and tries (fails) not to think of the shrine that never burned down, the girl that was never scarred— _your fault, your sin, for locking her up._ The smoke stings when she breathes and Lisa coughs, chokes, and some part of her is content to pretend that’s the cause of her tears. _Did you have any idea how scared she was?_

“—ko. Ginko! Hey!”

She doesn’t notice someone waving and calling out her name until she’s snapped out of the static of guilt, and even then, she doesn’t turn her shoulder. She doesn’t know which is worse; the fact she recognizes his voice at all, or that she’s glad it has to be _Eikichi_ , of all people, to find her.

“Ginko,” he tries again, having caught up to her. His voice a poor attempt at calmness, forcibly scrubbing away the familiarity in the way he says her hated name, the one she’ll never forgive him for bestowing unto her. He doesn’t quite manage, though. Her throat dries up, constricts, and she doesn’t quite manage to spit out a violent rejection in time before he says, “I wasn’t following you, I swear. I just happened to be around and I saw smoke and— what the hell were you doing? What’s that?” He demands.

Lisa swivels on her heel, cranes her neck so she can meet his eyes. Her anger a bubble forming in her chest, ready to burst. She clenches her hand, taut fingers gripping at her skirt. “It’s just trash. It doesn’t matter, it’s all gone now anyway. There’s nothing to save.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re breaking some kind of law,” he comments, stepping aside to inspect the ashes himself. “What, you couldn’t wait until garbage collection day to throw out the old newspapers?”

“They’re letters, idiot,” she says, not knowing why she bothers to be honest to some visual kei punk who, for all intents and purposes, shouldn’t even dare to exist within five meters of her. Except, of course, that isn’t true, because all pretenses of strangers had crumbled the moment he called her by her nickname—the one from the other world, the one that isn’t supposed to exist—and he probably knew that too, the stupid jerk. Why does he have to make it so _hard?_ Why does he share her inclination to peel open raw wounds before they’ve even gotten the chance to heal? “ _Shuai luo._ I was hoping no one would have to witness me disposing of the evidence.”

“Evidence of what?” He rolls his eyes, touches her shoulder with a casualness unbefitting of two people without history, the kind of people they’re supposed to be. She wonders if he’s going to push her, if they’re still as inclined to pointless violence around each other as she remembers they were in another lifetime, but his hand just stays there, barely a pressure in the space between her neck and arm—almost gentle, she thinks vaguely, and dispels the idiotic notion the next instant. “Come on, stop it. You’re not funny. And quit looking at me like that. You don’t even look like yourself anymore, you know?”

“Why does it matter to you?” Lisa blurts, biting down the _why do you still remember me? Why do we still remember each other?_ “I’m the same as I always am. And I hate that name. You know that. _You_ quit calling me that, dolt.”

“Sorry,” Eikichi says, backing off, and the way he looks at her is startlingly genuine. She pauses. “It’s just… I mean, it’s hard. After the shrine, I… I know you don’t like it, but…”

She sighs, “It’s fate, is what it is, that I’m stuck with that stupid nickname forever. I bet _that guy’s_ laughing his ass off up there.” There’s something satisfying about the way he winces at that, cornered, until she realizes she understands exactly why, and suddenly it isn’t so funny anymore. She doesn’t even know why she brought it up. She drops her hands. “Whatever,” she deflects, turns away. “Sumaru’s not that big of a place. It’s coincidence we met again, is all. Will it make you feel better if we believe that?”

It isn’t a coincidence. Of course it isn’t. But Eikichi relaxes and smiles slightly, anyway, like he’s been waiting for her to say that all along. The sunlit sky stretches endless above them, a perfect blue not unlike the one she remembers of their golden summer, and it softens the edges of his baby-face, makes his smile look a little less nervous—and Lisa unconsciously finds herself smiling back. It’s too easy. It almost doesn’t hurt, if she tries hard enough.

“Are you going to tell me what you were up to?” he ventures, after a moment.

“If you promise to stop calling me Ginko,” she decides to say, and laughs in his face when Eikichi starts grumbling about how unfair the deal is. He doesn’t need to know, she thinks, and gazes at the ashes, the burnt-out skeleton that remains of her childhood crush. She hadn’t wanted to grow up for such a long time. Lisa blinks, hard, once and twice, then finally, after making sure her eyes are dry enough, she says, “It’s nice to see you again, Eikichi,” and is surprised to find that she means it.

“Yeah,” Eikichi says, after a pause, rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Yeah, same to you.”

—

“This is going to happen again, isn’t it? I’m pretty sure it will. The powers that be have a cruel sense of humor, it seems.”

Lisa says this as the cashier counts the total purchase and she hands the money from her purse, telling her to keep the change. She shoves the book she just bought into her bag; she’s quit reading romance for the most part, and this one is a solemn title from an author she’s never heard of before, but the summary had sounded interesting, and it wouldn’t hurt to try something new for once. And after she quit stardom and Sasaki disappeared, she finds herself having a lot more free time than she knows what to do with.

The queue moves up. She looks over her shoulder, catching a glimpse of the book Eikichi’s picked out for himself—a memoir about some famous musician. Figures. In the midst of her attempts to change, she doesn’t know whether to feel sad or reassured to know Eikichi is still the same as always. She settles for a vague smile instead. She wonders if she’ll ever see him without having to relive their childhood in brief flashes of memory. If she can recognize him in a crowd and wave without having to feel pain piercing lightning-quick through her chest, the acute realization that their very existence in the same space is another reminder of Tatsuya’s sacrifice.

Lisa isn’t so optimistic. But still, her smile doesn’t waver. That ought to mean something.

“How have you been, Ginko?” Eikichi asks, somewhat awkwardly, as they exit the bookstore they’d run into each other in, the fourth time since the shrine. “I’ve been… fine. Yeah, fine. Dad’s still breathing down my neck as always, but otherwise, I manage,” he goes on when she doesn’t answer immediately. He leans his head against his hands, “Geez. Time does fly. I can’t wait to move out and live on my own already.”

Somehow the casual admission makes something inside her clench viciously, and she blurts out, “I heard Tatsuya got accepted to the police academy.”

“Ah? Really,” he says, taken visibly aback, and she feels guilty to be pleased to watch his reaction. He exhales, “Well, good for Tacchan. I’m glad.”

She sighs. _Tacchan._ The name sounds as jarring and stale in his voice as _chingyan_ does in hers, and she wants to say it, wants to hit him where it counts and tell him he’s being ridiculous, clinging to the memories of a past that didn’t happen in a world they destroyed with their own childish wishes— _he isn’t even_ our _Tatsuya anymore!_ —but something inside her pulls her against it, making the words heavy as lead sticking to her throat. _You still let him call you Ginko_ , it accuses her. _You’re the same._

Didn’t she used to hate that name?

“Is it alright for you? Letting him go like that?” Eikichi asks, apparently noticing the unease showing on her face. “I mean… I used to make fun of you for it, but, you know.” He shrugs, “Is it really alright to let him leave without saying anything?”

Standing beside him in front of the bookstore, skin prickling in the chilly air, she takes a long time to reply. Then she smiles once more, and it must not be very convincing, because his eyes avoid her suddenly, as if unwilling to be complicit in her deception. So be it, she thinks.

“ _Keh he!_ Aren’t we curious today.” Her laughter comes out spindly. After a moment, before he has the chance to ask further, she adds, perfectly pleasant and falsely oblivious: “I have to go. Say my regards to Miyabi if you get the chance—I haven’t seen her often lately, come to think of it.”

Her words sting him enough to make his face fall, but by then she’s already retreating, guilt closing in, filling up the hollow space where fate had taken away her heart.

—

She drags her bags and suitcases into the train compartment, places them in the overhead rack with well-trained arms. Catching sight of her parents still standing on the platform through the window, Lisa waves briefly at them, and resists rolling her eyes when she notices them tearing up already. She takes her seat, digs into her purse for her phone, and spends half a patient minute listening to the dial tone before he picks up.

“I didn’t see you at the station,” Lisa says softly, worrying her bottom lip absently. “I thought you’d want to see me off.”

“Sorry about that,” Eikichi replies, “Dad forced me to take another shift after I shirked my last one. He’s been on my case like crazy—more than usual, I mean. I think he’s worried because he found out I’ve been saving up to move out.” A pause. “Anyway. I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye to you in person.”

“Whatever. Not like I ever relied on your for anything anyway.”

He hesitates a moment, “I’ll miss you, Ginko.”

She counts a few seconds before saying, “I waited for you to come, you know.” The intercom echoes; beneath her, the train starts to rumble. Lisa leans back, blinking against the ceiling. “I mean,” she adds, “don’t be too sad. I’m sure we’ll see each other again. You better be a musician by then, you hear me?”

“I hope so,” he laughs, hollowly, and somehow his voice sounds impossibly distant already. “It’ll be lonely sometimes. Having one less person who remembers, I mean.”

“We’ll keep in touch, right?”

“Sure,” he says, hesitantly.  _Will it make you feel better if we believe that?_

“Eikichi?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll miss you too,” she chooses to say, instead of _I’m scared_ , or _I’m sorry for wanting to run away._ She hopes he’ll forgive him.

“I know, Ginko,” he says, because he does, and he will. “I know.”

The train moves, and Lisa leans against the glass, doesn’t reply. Listens to the static on the other end go on, and on, until finally, it stops.

 _I don’t want to lose you too,_ is the last thing she allows to go unsaid.

And then, she closes her eyes, and leaves.


End file.
